Wired has a really good article on Lessig's background. I recommend it. I am still unsure of what Lessig really wants when he asks geeks to fight. He does have a good point about not spending money that helps Hollywood and MS if you are fighting them. Instead of buying a DVD give the money to the EFF. etc... But that only goes so far. A planned boycott would be much more effective than me simply not buying an Xbox. Then there is the theory that we should work on projects that try to ensure freedom through technical means. Lessig doesn't think this is a good approach, becuase laws can make technology illegal. Ok, fair enough, but I am not going to become a lawyer either. So I need a bit more guidance as to how I can help. I write letters and send faxes, but that really doesn't feel substantial. Writing code at least ends with a tangeble product, though my job has cut into my time to work on cool projects. :(

Work

I am now officially getting paid to hack. Its really very satisfying, in a junior high sort of way. It has been so long since I did this kind of thing that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it. But it turns out that not much has really changed in 4 years. There are a few new attacks, the tools are better, but really its same stuff I was doing back in Purdue's Coast Lab (now renamed Cerias). Its nice to work with really smart people too. :)

Mnet

Well, v0.5.1 Stable was just released on sourceforge. Thats cool. I have been slacking due to my new job. Plus I am having serious issues with Cygwin and Python. I am not using Cygwin's python, just its shell. We have a .sh script to set up the env for us, but due to windows using \ and UNIX wanting / it has been having problems. Actually, I now believe that the slashes are not the problem. My current theory is that /cygdrive/d is not being interpreted correctly by python. Today I will try to set the path by hand and see if that fixes it. Anyway, long story short, until I figure this out, I can't test the changes I made. :(

Server

We now have a 1u box. We need to put BSD on it, and then send it off to TheBunker. Once that is up, I will look into setting up an anonymous remailer.

Books

I am just completing Rudy Rucker's non-fiction collection Seekwhich is broken up into 3 parts: Science, Life, and Art. I could have done without the Life sections since its mostly travelogues, having said that, I have really enjoyed it. The science section mostly deals with Cellular Automata, which is particularly relavant due to Wolfram's new opus. The Art section is short, but it talks more about cyberpunk, which is why I like Rudy in the first place. I really miss Mondo 2k (I also miss the cypherpunks). I miss the optimism that we had when we believed the net would really change the way society worked. I was talking with an ex-Kozmo employee a few days ago, and he said something that really summed it up for me: "For a while we were living in the future." I loved ordering things online and getting them an hour later, it really was instantanous gratification. And while the current crypto p2p movement is nice, it lacks the pithy slogans that made cypher/cyber-punks so cool. :)